Declare War on Police Brutality

Illinois Deputies Strip Woman Naked and Take Photos After Fatal Crash

21 Apr 2015

Cook County Sheriffs deputies in Illinois are being sued for snapping creepy photos of 20-year-old Jessica Mejia’s body, after she was killed in a car accident. To make matters worse, the officers unclothed Mejia’s body before taking the pictures.

The Chicago Tribune, has been shown the photos by the Mejia family. The photos of Mejia show her dressed in a pair of jeans as well as a white tee-shirt. But those weren’t the only images. Others taken just after the initial ones submitted for the police report, are now the subject of a pending lawsuit.

The Mejia family attorney say that the pictures clearly show that police removed Jessica Mejia’s body from the vehicle, undressed her and laid her naked body on a tarp. They then photographed the naked corpse which they disturbingly manipulated into odd poses.

Mejia’s mother says that she has filed the lawsuit to restore her daughter’s name and to go after officers who she believes should not be on the streets.

Don Perry, the Mejia’s family attorney, says that the sheriff’s office was completely in the legal wrong to do what they did.

“This was a young lady that just died and was treated with less dignity than a deer carcass you find on the side of the road,” Perry explained.

But not surprisingly, Cara Smith, a spokeswoman for the sheriff, claimed that they did everything by the books and “acted appropriately to try and preserve evidence.”

What did stripping Mejia’s corpse have to do with “evidence”? They have yet to explain.

“The family suffered an unimaginable loss, and the crime scene photos were taken as our officers investigated this crime and were instrumental in securing a conviction against the person responsible for this tragic death,” Smith claimed. “In no way were these photos intended to cause harm to the family.”

But Christina Mejia says that this was all part of the police trying to blame her daughter and make her look like the cause of the accident.

“I don’t feel protected,” Mejia said. “I feel violated.”

People already have been left with the inaccurate perception that Mejia “died from having sex, not from somebody being drunk and killing her. Because they took these photos, by the time everybody else got to the scene, all the ambulances and everybody else, she was partially naked because they made her naked,” Mejia explained. “So the rumors, and the allegations… they made it believable.”

But by stripping her daughter at the scene and photographing her in bizarre, contorted positions, Mejia explained, sheriff’s deputies contributed to and fostered that insulting perception.

About author

Filming Cops was started in 2010 as a conglomerative blogging service documenting police abuse. The aim isn’t to demonize the natural concept of security provision as such, but to highlight specific cases of State-monopolized police brutality that are otherwise ignored by traditional media outlets.